Facebook Hints At Measurement Product; Cars.com Bonanza

Facebook ad product marketer Brian Boland delivers on op-ed in Ad Age that suggests Facebook is on the verge of its own substitute for cookies. He writes, “Until the industry adopts a universal standard by which to measure people, it's our collective responsibility to educate all advertising stakeholders about the key differences between people and cookies. And to practice what we preach, we'll be rolling out a new people-based measurement capability soon.” Read more.

Cars.com Rewards

Cars.com is “for sale” as its ownership syndicate comprised of newspaper publishers awaits a rare payday amid its own destruction by digital. Nieman Journalism Lab’s Ken Doctor analyzes the expected price tag of $3 billion: “That’s a big number for a shrinking industry. It’s more than 10 percent of all the ad money newspapers will take in this year; it’s a third of all the reader revenue they’ll take in. It would fund, at an average $80,000 a year, a total of 37,500 newsroom jobs for a year.” Read more.

YouTube Needs TV Logins

At the TV Connect conference in London, YouTube's global director of platform partnerships said Google made an error in allowing smart TV manufacturers to build its apps. Because those apps by and large don’t support logins, Google can't personalize videos, as Will Richmond and Colin Dixon discuss in a VideoNuze podcast. It’s now reclaiming authorship of its TV apps. Listen. Squint a little and you can see the ad implications. Will Google be first across the line with cross-platform IDs that include TV watching?

Real-Time Value

Raju Narisetti, senior vice president of strategy for News Corp., responds to an editorial by Poynter’s Rick Edmonds that criticizes “vanity” metrics. Narisetti argues, “To continue to ignore the reality of being able to see often in real time and measure and course-correct based on digital engagement data and metrics is a self-inflicted wound that will see our audiences migrate in big numbers to those upstarts that seem to do this as part of their DNA.” Read more via Poynter.

Overstated Online Video Ratings

Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser released a comparative analysis of online video consumption, which estimates audiences of comScore are about three times the figure for competitor Nielsen. Writing for Video Daily, Joe Mandese dissects the data. Mandese writes, “Wieser argues that Nielsen's legacy as the TV advertising standard will ultimately give it greater leverage as advertisers and agencies move to integrate the way they plan and buy TV and video advertising.” Read the full story.

Big Local TV

Marketing tech isn’t the only industry to see mergers and acquisitions. Broadcaster Media General acquired LIN Media for $1.6 billion on Friday. Media General Chairman Stewart Bryan said the deal would create the second-largest, local TV broadcasting company in the United States, according to Reuters. Read a bit more. This follows last year’s acquisition by Gannett, which bought Belo Corp., and Tribune Co., which bought Local TV Holdings LLC, among others. More in The New York Times.

Feedback Looping

The Verge notices that impression levels on Twitter are now being revealed to consumers for their individual tweets – a feature advertisers have long enjoyed. The Verge’s Casey Newton writes, “A view count lets you know that even if you're not receiving retweets or favorites, your posts aren't going totally unread.” Read it. Consumers need analytics, too.